


Stories of the Second Self: Face in the Water

by John_Steiner



Series: Alter Idem [7]
Category: Urban Fantasy - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:40:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22500376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/John_Steiner/pseuds/John_Steiner
Summary: Humans and supernatural Pentacastes still remain friends and go on a road trip to take stock of the new reality of Alter Idem. However, a little stop by the lake will change their outlook forever.
Series: Alter Idem [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1618813





	Stories of the Second Self: Face in the Water

We had decided to drive to Vegas for the Fourth of July holiday, before we got the news on the radio. That would seem strange to most people, but Genia's family disowned her after the antlers grew from the top of her forehead and her feet turned to hooves. For my family, it was the reverse. I was the favorite son before the wings, and after they took it as a sign that I was God's chosen. My parents named me Zachariah, which means Yahweh remembers, though I think they meant it for themselves more than me.

I believed it at first, and then realized the way they treated me wasn't the same. It's like they somehow were holier people just because everyone thought I was. I wanted to be a minister and was planning to go to divinity school when this so-called Second Self thing started. Our other friends are still human, except for Lebron.

He doesn't talk about it, but we can all tell. Scalp hair grew from the back and latter sides of his neck was a dead giveaway that he's a werewolf. I think he's more disappointed that it doesn't come out as curly as it used to, and that's a big deal for a black man.

Anyway, we never got to Vegas, because the radio said that mass rioting and violence broke out. Everywhere in the country was falling apart. Just a year and a half after the supernatural turn of the world, and people just couldn't hold it together.

And so four months on the road we had to live by our wits and whatever we could salvage. Fortunately, that didn't exclude finding gas for the car, though we strapped bicycles on top just case it came to that. One for each of us, except myself. I can fly now.

"Is that a lake there?" Genia asked while she sat up in the front passenger seat, "I know it's gotta be cold, but I have to get something resembling a bath."

"It's getting dark," Erin pointed out at the early-setting autumn sun.

"Just a short dip then," Genia pleaded, "C'mon!"

"There's no one else around, so why not?" Lebron agreed.

"Will you be okay?" Erin asked me looking up into the rear view mirror.

I get a shiver, but decided to lie, "I'll be okay."

"You sure, Zach?" she checked.

I get a nighttime version of seasonal affective disorder. I don't know any other angels-- making me wonder what it says about the people in my church, so I can't say if that's normal. I just know it wasn't a problem until the wings emerged.

"I got the Maglite, I can handle it," I said with more surety.

"Guess I'll get a bath too, then," Erin said as she pulled the car off the road.

In the last shattered town, where we saw almost no one left, I saw Genia and Erin coming out with bathing suits and extra clothes, the kind I knew they wouldn't have been able to afford before money lost its meaning. Back then, there were six of us, whereas now it's only four.

When the world was normal, I would've never talked to them again for stealing all that shamelessly, however I've dropped a lot of assumptions about God's will and learned about circumstantial morality. I needed clothes not so tattered and worn also, but figured jeans and thicker shirts were in order. Though, I had to cut holes in the shoulders to get my wings through.

They all switched to bathing suits before daring the first top dips into the frigid water. I stayed out by the car with the flashlight, checking beyond the road for anything. With so many trees nearby the coming night seemed more foreboding. We were heading back east, so I figured we were in Tennessee or Kentucky with these kinds of woods. Hardly twenty minutes later the last rays of daylight were gone.

Really, I don't like being just out and exposed at night, so I run the flashlight over the trees to see if there's a high place I can be. Finding a particularly sturdy y-branch I launch myself up with a jump and powerful wing beat. I felt my much larger chest muscles flexing to get me up there.

Leaning my back against one half of the split, letting my feet dangle over the other and kept watching the lake. I saw Genia with her antlered head out of the water, and Lebron by the shore giving his clothes a scrubbing, and so I assumed that was Erin doing slow strokes.

How can she be enjoying a swim in that? It had be freezing in this weather. Except I saw Erin much further down the lake shore in shallower waters, rinsing out her hair.

I leaned forward, "Who is that?"

I aimed the light that way, but the swimmer submerged before I can illuminate the spot.

"What?" Genia asked looking up at me.

"I thought I saw someone else in there," I said.

"Erin maybe?" Genia asks.

I pointed the light to where Erin is, "No, someone else." 

"Someone else is in the lake?" Genia said.

He took a whiff of the air, before saying, "I got nothin'. You sure."

Before I could speak, there was splashing from Genia. I turned the light back to her, but all I saw were the last ripples.

"Get back to the car, and get the gun!" Lebron yelled out, and then lunged into the lake.

I dropped from the tree into a vertically oriented glide back to the car. Popping the trunk, I saw the shotgun and grabbed it as well as the box of shells. We all took turns practicing to shoot it, so I was prepared for the kick if ever we needed it.

I knew I didn't want to fly with a gun in my hand, so I ran back to the lake. By that time, I saw and heard Erin screaming out, while Lebron was repetitively diving under to see if he could find Genia. Holding the shotgun by the middle down by my side, I scanned the water with the Maglite.

"Do you see her?" I called out.

Lebron surfaced again and shook his head, "Cruise over the water for me."

First, I got up to Erin to give her the shotgun, and then took off to fly over the water. During the day, I'd be perfectly comfortable soaring around, but at night I always dreaded smacking into something I couldn't see and break my neck. Lebron might have great regeneration, but I don't know if I do.

"Anything?" Lebron called up to me.

"No," I answered, before noticing something, "Wait!"

Lebron's night vision got better after he became a werewolf, but not so much so that he could've seen from further away what I did passing within a few yards of it. Genia was laying on her side as if there were only a few inches of water, despite it being so far from shore.

"Lebron, over here," I shouted, as I cruised into a landing of a couple loud splashing steps, "It's shallow here for some reason."

"Comin' bro!" Lebron has breath to yell despite the intense swimming stroke he was doing.

"Hey," I said to Genia, "You okay? Can you move?"

She didn't budge, not an inch.

Once Lebron found solid purchase in the lake, he stood and trotted over, "Is she breathin'?"

I turned Genia over, not thinking if maybe she hit her head, and maybe made things worse.

"I got this," Lebron said, and took over looking after Genia, "I'm smelling blood. Oh shit!"

I pointed the light down at her, and saw the bite marks on her neck. "The hell?"

Lebron was shocked I said hell, but brushes that aside while he checked for a pulse. "I think she's dead."

"No, no, no!" I moaned, "Genia?"

Lebron stiffened up, and then looked around with his nose twitching, "Fuckin' get that light up."

My passes with the light were wild and Lebron rips it from my hand to use it himself. He settled the beam on some dark patch in the water.

"What's that?" I haven't heard my voice sound like that since I was a kid.

Lebron shook his head, "I don't know, but it's drifting this way."

"Is it growing?" I asked, realizing it was higher up from the water than before.

Then the forehead broke the surface, and then the eye sockets. It was so dark the face looked like it has no eyes, just two abyssal voids darker than the night.

"You better back off!" Lebron even sounded worried, despite his warning.

"Why's she not breathing?" I asked.

"Angels, werewolves, Fae," Lebron listed off, "What else do we gotta look forward to? Zombies?"

"What did you do to her?" I screamed at the woman, half of whose face was above water now.

I couldn't see her mouth in the light, but from the shift in her upper face I could tell she was smiling, "I don't think that's a zombie."

"Erin?" Lebron called out, "Gotta get that shotgun over here."

Despite creeping undeath coming our way, I can't help but look down to Genia. She was a beautiful person before, and somehow the Fae features made her even more majestic. And whoever this former person was, they had taken that away from us. I just grew incensed by that fact.

By the time I look up again, I saw that the gray-skinned woman was halfway out of the water and pacing toward us slow enough not to splash the water. A growl escaped Lebron's throat, the first one I've ever heard from him. 

The woman's response rocked me to my soul. Her mouth opens to reveal not just a couple fangs, but an entire mouth full of teeth that-- while not longer than normal, are all visibly sharp. She convulsed and water spewed from her mouth like a scene from The Exorcist.

But that cackle was what really made my kegel muscles clinch.

Lebron, already halfway transformed into a bipedal wolf, dashed at her with his teeth bared. Yet, when he got to her, his claws and canines counted for nothing. She swatted him to the side so hard that he was hurled eight feet and landed into a foot of water. I feared he'd drown, but he had the sense of mind to get his head up.

He looked at her, and I could see fear in his lupine face.

Whoever this woman was, she was not a zombie, that much was clear.

"'While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light,'" was the quote that comes to my lips.

"John Twelve, Thirty-Six," the vampire woman replied, "That's the same thing my mother and father chanted when they tried to drown me here. For that, I'll take you slow and with anguish!"

"Think so, do you," I challenged, suddenly fearing nothing, and lifted up my wings, "I AM the son of light."

I can't say what came over me, but I felt my heart shine, and not just my heart. A glow rose up around me, and then I realized it was from my normally transparent feathers.

"I cast you out!" I said with a calm even tone, as my surroundings turned as bright as day.

Panic caused her face to stretch as if it were putty, and she leapt into the water with a screech. I strode over to Lebron and helped him up.

"I didn't know you could do that," Lebron exclaimed in wonder, having changed back.

"Nether did I," I said with shortness in my breath, as the glow in my wings dimmed. "It's exhausting though."

"I thought for sure, you'd burn her ass with that shit," Lebron boasted.

"Huh! I wish," I replied.

"I should probably take this God stuff more seriously," Lebron praised.

I knelt down by Genia and shook my head, "No, you shouldn't. I think he let us down. We gotta be our own way and light."

That was when Lebron broke down into sobs, and I just stoond there ruing the day I first hoped to be a minister.


End file.
